Transnational Affective Circuitry: Public Information Campaigns, Affective Governmentality, and Border Enforcement

Abstract

Geographers have been central to identifying and exploring the shifting spatialities of border enforcementand how different enforcement strategies alter the geography of state sovereignty. Migration-related publicinformation campaigns (PICs) are one strategy that has received increasing attention from geographers andsocial scientists more broadly in recent years. Although existing research examines the sites and spaceswhere PICs are distributed, as well as the affective content of their messaging, little research has examinedthe development of campaigns and the transnational connections that enable their deployment. This articledraws on work in the fields of carceral circuitry and transnational enforcement networks to expand ourunderstanding of affective governmentality as a transnational strategy of border governance. Based on datacollected as part of a large-scale comparative study of the use of PICs by the U.S. and Australiangovernments, we argue that this form of affective governmentality relies on transnational circuits throughwhich people, money, and knowledge move to enable the development and circulation of affectivemessaging. In doing so, we develop the concept of transnational affective circuitry to refer to the oftencontingent, temporary relations and connections that enable PICs to operate as a form of transnationalaffective governmentality aimed at hindering unauthorized migration. Our analysis illustrates thetransnational connections that enable increasingly expansive and creative forms of border enforcement toemerge while also expanding the scope of examinations of affective governmentality to attend to therelations that undergird and enable this form of transnational governance.